Month: April 2014

With a week of warmer weather behind us, I had a feeling that today would be good for the first expedition of the Spring. I rose at 5 AM, careful not to wake Sue, dressed quietly, packed my binoculars and camera, and pulled my bike from the basement. I then cycled over to Elgin Street and ate breakfast at Dunn’s. After breakfast, I carried my bike on to a 95 bus to Orleans, in the east end of the City.

From the Place D’Orleans Shopping Centre, I headed south on Tenth Line Road. I passed out of the urban area, into the farm fields, where I stopped to admire two eastern phoebes flitting around a derelict barn. It looks like a good place for barn swallows. Dropping down into the lowlands around the Mer Bleue bog (a globally significant wetland), I almost immediately came across a beautiful northern harrier, which drifted away across a damp, grassy field.

I turned on to Smith Road and climbed a low rise, getting my first glimpse of the fields and floodplain east of Mer Bleue. A flock of geese cackled in the pasture beside the road. In the scraggly hayfield behind them, a dozen sandhill cranes gleaned through the hummocks. Unfortunately, my camera is limited to optical 5x zoom and digital 10x zoom. But you can just make them out the photos.

From Smith Road, I turned south on Milton toward Bearbrook. During most of the year, it meanders through a broad floodplain of corn and hayfields. In the spring, though, it spreads into a wide, shallow lake. Canada geese gather by the tens of thousands, fattening themselves on the leftover grain. They are joined by mallards, pintails and teal. Sometimes flocks of snow geese stray a bit west of their usual migration route to them. Today, though, I saw only geese and pintail. But I was fortunate to see the arrival of the largest flock of geese that I’ve seen in many years: perhaps five thousand, straggling in from the southeast, probably from the Ottawa River.

From Bearbrook, I headed a little east and then north into the Cardinal Creek area. I cruised the roads for several hours, exploring some of the places that I’d featured in a recent planning study (the Greater Cardinal Creek Subwatershed Study): woodlots, karst pavements, the Proulx sugarbush.

I ended my explorations at the Cardinal Creek karst: a cave and ravine system, formed where the creek tumbles over a steep escarpment. For most of the year, the creek by-passes the ravine, travelling underground through the cave (which is blocked off to protect the public). During the spring run-off, however, or in summer storms, it fills the ravine with a torrent.

All things considered, the day could hardly have been more successful. I cycled 86 km, saw almost every bird that I hoped to find, and arrived home safe and sound for good supper, a hot bath, and relaxed evening.